Office of Rural and Remote Health

About us

The Office of Rural and Remote Health leads the strategic direction of rural and remote health services in Queensland, taking a whole-of-system approach to achieving health equity for rural and remote Queenslanders.

Queensland Health considers rural and remote health services as those facilities categorised as 4 to 7 on the Modified Monash (MM) Model (large rural towns to very remote towns). You can use the Australian Government's health workforce locator to see the classification of each location.

The Executive Director of the Office of Rural and Remote Health is Elisha McGuiness.

Responsibilities and functions

• Be a strong voice for rural and remote health services and health professionals
• Develop policies and strategies that support rural and remote health equity
• Address health care challenges in rural and remote communities
• Give practical operational support to rural and remote health services through credentialing, education, and development of clinical manuals

Credentialing and scope of practice

We support credentialing and scope of clinical practice applications for:

• health professionals working in the 4 rural and remote Hospital and Health Services (HHS) (Torres and Cape, Central West, North West and South West)
• primary care GPs with the Royal Flying Doctor Service
• senior relieving GPs working with Queensland Country Practice
• senior medical officers in the Flying Specialist Service
• registered nurses and midwives with certain scopes of practice
• allied health professionals with extended scopes of practice

Queensland Health staff can read more about credentialling governance and processes on their intranet.

Rural and remote clinical manuals

We develop 3 key rural and remote guidelines: the Primary Clinical Care Manual, the Chronic Conditions Manual, and the Rural and Remote Emergency Services Standardisation guidelines. Read about our clinical resources.

Digital education

We support education for rural nurses through our digital education team. You can find our courses on Queensland Health's online learning platform, iLearn.

Projects and initiatives

We run projects and initiatives to strengthen Queensland’s rural and remote health workforce. Learn what we're doing to improve rural and remote health care in Queensland.